First let's start with Special. One thing I neglected to mention last time was this weird item I came across while playing.



A bottle with a C on it? I have no idea what that could be. It's a complete mystery to me. Now for something more silly. So you know the animation when an enemy is hit with a bomb right? They turn into that funny yellow face and then disappear?



Well in this game, this MSX version, the enemies linger for quite a while as they disappear, as you can see above. While working through these stages, I noticed I could place bombs on the same tile they were disappearing on, resulting in something like this.



The sprite of the enemy dying is on top of the bomb. Now this doesn't affect the game in any way but it's quite hilarious to look at. I call it bomb face and it can be a lot of fun to dabble around with.



It looks like he has an eyebrows and mustache! I'd love to see someone draw a doodle on this silly guy. And now, to tie up my coverage of this game for today, he's a weird GIF where two enemies overlap.



Looks like a monster movie villain.

On the left we have the ZX Spectrum version and on the right is the MSX I showed earlier.


As you can see, the big differences are a few palette swaps including how Bomberman looks, the appearance of the exit and the bomb's color. Those are pretty minute details but overall, the game plays much faster on the ZX Spectrum. Take a look at these balloons moving around between the two versions. Even as GIFs you can see the difference!

Again, left is ZX Spectrum and right is the MSX.


Look at those differences in speed! The ZX Spectrum was much more difficult to play, considering how quickly the balloons could run you down. On that note, being the masochist that I am, I played the ZX version all the way through Level 100. So that means I've basically played the same game twice. I have a life I swear!  

As per usual, once you break 100, the game continues on infinitely. The same auto bomb levels appear every 4 stages as well just to drag out the festivities even longer. The counter up top does that glitch-becomes an item-thing too.



One other thing I did was keep track of the items as usual. I had a nearly identical run, finding all of the same items except for the weird 7 remote control thing. This time however I did find a tobacco pipe! Coupled with the cocktail we can see that human bomberman really enjoys his vices. Imagine that, a middle aged man handling explosives while smoking and drinking. Paints an entire new portrait of him doesn't it?

It's also worth noting that the Lemon is missing from the cocktail. I suppose his tastes have changed lately.



And lastly, just because I enjoy it so...



He dies even faster this time! It just keeps getting weirder.

This game is the same as Bomberman for the PC-E/TurboGrafx-16. It's the game where Black Bomber kidnaps Dr. Mitsumori's daughter and flies away to his castle. Here's som GIFs to prove it.




The passwords for the PC-E version also work for this version as well. I jumped straight to the final boss and beat him, so I haven't completely played through this game just yet. The ending is identical as well and had to be broken up into two GIFs there.

This game is largely without difference. One little thing I noticed was a company called SystemSoft worked on the port of this game? They have an animation for their company when the game starts up and are mentioned on the title screen as well.



Derivative work? I assume they mean port?

The final comment I have about this game for now is that one of the opening demos has the AI fail spectacularly at the game. The game even begins up like a normal bomberman stage, saying "Demo Start" like it wasn't obvious.